The Vacation
by starkiddypotter
Summary: I'm writing this for a contest I held on twitter. Hope you guys like it!
1. Chapter 1

"We're gonna be late!" called someone in front of Laura, as she was struggling with her strategically packed bags.

"Just hold on! I'm working on it." Laura bent down to click the wheel back in place on her bag, and ran to catch up with the rest of the gang.

"Flight 17C, final boarding call for flight 17C to Honolulu, Hawaii." The airport employee boomed over the loudspeaker. The plane was about to take off, with or without Laura. She caught up with her friends as they were waiting for their boarding passes to be scanned.

"Well, look who decided to show up. We thought we lost you back there." Walker turned and crossed his arms at her. Laura pushed her curly brown hair out of her face and gave him a sarcastic smile as she caught her breath. The group had run all the way from airport security to their gate, and LAX was a pretty big airport.

"Well, my-"

"Next." The employee hissed at them. They both looked behind Joe to realize that all of their friends were already on board. Joe gave his pass to the employee, and after it was scanned, she shoved it back into his hands. "Have a nice trip." She said with a fake smile. Laura proceeded up and did the same. The woman again replied with "Have a nice trip." She didn't even bother to smile this time.

As she was walking on board the huge aircraft, Laura noticed that most of the group was in the back. This was good, because she knew that her friends could get a little rowdy at times. Actually, little was an understatement.

She took the empty seat in the very last row next to Joe. She stowed her carry-on bag under the seat in front of her; Meredith's seat. Laura noticed that Meredith was making a last minute call before the plane took off, probably to her family.

"I hate flying." Joe said. Laura looked at him and noticed he was turning pale.

"It'll be fine, the flight isn't too long. Besides, we're all here together." She smiled at him.

"Yeah, I know, I just can't shake this bad feeling that…" He trailed off.

"Look, I promise, we'll be fine." As she said it, Laura caught the sight of a small wad of paper flying past her head. Joey had already lost patience and was looking for some trouble to cause. Joe picked it up off of the ground and threw it back in Joey's direction. Laura sat back and rolled her eyes. "Boys."

The "Seat Belt On" light flashed, and small clicks rang throughout the place. The plane jerked forward as it navigated to the right runway. The captain introduced himself over the intercom, and after he was done, the flight attendants started the safety announcements.

"Psst, Laura." Laura looked to her right. A very annoyed Jaime was pointing at Laura's foot. "Could you get that for me? Joey knocked it over." Laura looked down and picked up the half empty water bottle sitting on the floor, and handed it back. "Thanks. Is… Walker okay?" Laura glanced behind her to find him sweating and staring out the window. The captain had just advised the flight attendants to prepare for takeoff.

"He hates flying." Laura said, looking back at Jaime.

"Looks like it." She took a sip from her water.

The plane started to speed up, and Laura could tell that Joe was on the edge. His eyes were closed, for one, and he was sweating like crazy.

"Hey." Laura said. Walker opened his huge eyes and looked at her. "We'll be alright. I promise. Just relax." She said. She was trying to be as comforting as possible, when she wasn't so relaxed herself. Laura hated flying too, she just didn't want to show it, especially now.

The weather was muggy that day. Clouds, rain, cold. Not good flying weather at all, which didn't help calm any nerves. About 2 hours into the flight, the plane started experiencing turbulence.

"We seem to be experiencing some unexpected turbulence from this storm system. Please remain seated until otherwise instructed." The captain buzzed over the intercom. Laura looked up from her book and out the window. It was as black as night, at 1 pm. Thankfully, Joe was asleep.

"Jaime, have you seen it out there?" Laura said, struggling to keep her voice steady. She pointed at the window. Jaime lifted her head from a book and looked outside.

"Wow… What time is it? It can't be night already." She asked.

"About five after one." Laura replied. She heard a distant rumble from outside, and she tried her best keep calm. Jaime could tell that Laura was scared.

"We're halfway there. Maybe you should try falling asleep, it seems to be working for everyone else." She gestured to their friends. Almost everyone around them was asleep.

"Good idea, thanks." Jaime smiled and returned to her book. Laura leaned back and closed her eyes. She tried as hard as she could to clear her mind of everything. After she had done so and found a comfortable position in her chair, she started to nod off.

Then there was a deafening crash and the lights went out.


	2. Chapter 2

There was an instant uproar. People were screaming as the plane gained speed, hurtling itself towards the ground. Laura groped through the darkness for something, anything to hold on to. She found that the armrest and the chair in front of her were good supports.

Laura looked to her right, and she saw something that terrified her. The right side of the plane was on fire, the right wing was completely missing.

"Laura!" She felt a hand grab her shoulder. She whipped around, and though she could hardly see him, Laura saw the complete shock and terror in Joe's face. "Are you okay?" He shouted.

"Yes! Can you see anyone else?" Laura shouted in reply. They looked around them, but it was no use. They were surrounded by complete darkness.

"We need to take cover!" Joe shouted again.

"Wha-"

CRASH

The whole plane jerked hard, sending some people flying from their spots. Cold water was rushing in from all possible holes in the metal, and it was taking Laura all of her strength not to freak out completely.

Laura strained her eyes to see what was happening up in the front of the plane; it looked as if everyone was crowding to a certain spot, and… disappearing.

An exit! It looked like most of the others had gotten the same idea. The number of people remaining on the plane was decreasing, but Laura was in the last row. The exit was in the front. Water was filling up the plane fast; the short 2 or three minutes they had been there, the water was already up to her ankles. If she waited too much longer, it would be a narrow chance in getting out.

After what seemed like hours, she saw some of the StarKids moving up. They were gonna make it. But someone, she couldn't tell who, was struggling. They were limping really badly. But seemingly out of nowhere, two others came to the rescue to help the person up the aisle.

When she was finally able to move up, the water was halfway up Laura's shins. But before she did, she grabbed one of her bags and took Joe's hand. She did NOT want to do this on her own.

With some difficulty, Laura waded through the cold waters in the darkness up towards the front of the damaged plane. Slowly, she could feel the large aircraft tilting down and back into the ocean. As she passed by, she noticed left behind bags, books, electronic devices, food, drinks, everything you would take on a long plane ride, floating in the water and sitting on the seats.

Laura reached the front of the plane and saw the emergency exit opened that was letting everyone out. Outside, she saw that the plane had crashed about a hundred yards off shore of an island. "Look! It looks like everyone is heading to that island." She said.

"Can you swim?" Joe asked her.

"Yeah, let's go. It's not too far." And without any further notice, Laura jumped straight into the ocean, followed closely by Joe. She wanted to get off that God forsaken plane as soon as she could.

It was storming hard. Rain was pounding down everywhere and the sky was as black as night. The water was cold, but not too deep. A pretty easy swim. Once they were close, the water got shallow enough for the two of them to stand up and run the rest of the way.

Laura noticed that everyone arriving on shore wasn't staying there. And as they reached the sand, she saw Jaime and Corey standing at the entrance of a forest waving at them to follow. And so, they did.

The four of them started weaving through all of the different kinds of tropical trees, and as they did, Laura noticed other people she didn't recognize doing the same. They had expressions on their faces that said that they didn't know where they were going, and didn't know what to do. But Corey and Jaime seemed the exact opposite.

After about 5 minutes of this, the four came upon a cave, where the rest of the group was residing. Someone had already lit a fire, and there was spare food from the flight that was never eaten being passed around.

Laura looked at her friends, most still in shock, some terror stricken. But what hit her the hardest was the person who was laying down, to the side.

Joey was passed out against the wall of the cave, with huge gashes in his leg and side.


	3. Chapter 3

Laura stood there, staring at Joey. The only way that she could tell that he was even alive is that he was breathing.

Jaime rushed the two back out of the cave. "Um, we're still getting settled in here… Why don't you guys go find some water?" Joe and Laura looked at each other, and hesitantly agreed.

It was night now, the clouds had thinned and it had stopped raining. Neither of them said a word as they walked along, looking for any signs of water. Both of their minds were heavy with dread. The plane crash, how on earth they were supposed to get home, Joey…

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Joe spoke up. "Thanks."

"What?" Laura asked, confused.

"For trying to comfort me on the plane. It really helped." He said.

"Oh, it was no problem." She replied, smiling. Just then, Laura thought she heard the faintest sound of trickling water. She stopped. "Do you hear that?" She asked.

Joe stopped to listen. "Yeah…" He said, after a second.

"Where's it coming from?"

"It sounds like…" He stopped to listen again. "Up there." He pointed up ahead of them, generally in the direction they were originally going.

So they took off in that general direction. The trickling got louder, and it was also accompanied by some unfamiliar noises.

"What's that sound?" Laura wondered aloud.

"I have no idea, let's go see!" Joe sprinted up ahead.

"Wait up!" She called after him. Joe ran a couple hundred yards before he stopped. Laura caught up with him, and he was staring at something. She looked in front of her to see what he was looking at, and she realized why he had stopped.

In front of them, on the ground, were other passengers from the plane. Many were injured from the crash, anyone who was left was helping tend wounds and gather as much supplies as they could. The noises that Laura and Joe were hearing were the moans from the wounded passengers, crying from friends of the wounded, and hushed talking of the others gathering supplies.

There was a reason everyone was crowded there, there was a stream feeding into a small pond that served as a good water supply.

A tall man with short hair and tattered clothes walked up to them.

"Are you two okay? Do you need any treatment?" He asked them.

"No, we're fine. We were just looking for some water." Joe explained.

"Are you two the only ones that we haven't accounted for? Or have you seen others? We're trying to account for everyone that was lost." The man said.

"No, we're not the only ones. There's a group of us in a cave somewhere back along the cliffs." Laura explained.

"How many of you are there?"

"Um…" Laura started to sift through faces in her head. There was herself, Joe, Dylan, Meredith, Brian, Jaime, Corey, Lauren, and Joey…

"There are seven others." Joe finished before Laura could.

A woman with shoulder length, wavy, brown hair wearing a tank top walked up beside the man. "What's the news here?" She said. She had an intimidating voice.

"There are nine more accounted for." The man told her.

"Good." The woman said. After that, she walked off.

"She was nice." Joe joked after she was out of earshot.

"That's Paula, my sister. I'm Seth, by the way. If you guys want to go back to your friends now, just letting you know that if you ever need help, you can come back here. Luckily, we have a couple of doctors that were on the plane with us." The man said.

"Okay, thanks so much." Laura said. Seth walked back to the crowd to get back to helping. Laura nudged Joe. "Do you think they could help Joey?"

"I don't know, but we should go let everyone know about this place." Joe suggested, and Laura nodded. So, they took off running back in the direction of the cave.

After about 10 minutes of nonstop running, they got back to the cave where Lauren was waiting outside for them.

"Good! You're back. Did you find any food? Or water?" Lauren immediately asked.

"Yeah, we found a pond, stream thing." Joe said. "And some guy told us that-"

"That's great. Here, take these, and go fill 'em up." Lauren handed both of them four water bottles each. "Now, off you go!" She started pushing them away from the cave.

"Lauren, why are you so anxious to-"

Joe was cut off again, not by Lauren this time, but Joey's scream of pure pain.


	4. Chapter 4

"What is going on in there?" Joe was yelling at Lauren.

"Look, we'll tell you later, right now Joey really needs water, so go!" Lauren continued to shove them away.

Laura could tell that Joe was getting angry. She grabbed his arm. "Come on, let's just go."

"Fine. But I want a full explanation when we get back." Joe said. Lauren nodded in agreement. With that, he stormed off in the opposite direction, Laura following closely behind him.

There was more silence as the two of them walked back to the pond. They both knew that Joey was very hurt, and they also knew that their friends were trying to isolate them from it.

Laura was first to break the silence. "Look, I'm sure they have a good reason why they're-"

"Why they're what? Completely cutting us off from Joey? There's no good reason for that. He's my best friend, I have a RIGHT to know." He fumed.

"We'll find out soon enough, for right now all we need to worry about is getting water."

Joe stayed silent the rest of the way. When they arrived at the camp, after the same 15 minute walk, they saw the same scene. People getting treated, people gathering supplies, people making shelter. Laura and Joe carefully weaved through the crowd of people, trying hard not to stare at people as they passed by. Some injuries were hard not to take your eyes away from.

They reached the pond and crouched down next to the water to fill the bottles up.

"Back so soon?" Laura looked up to see Seth standing above them.

"Yeah. Our friend needs water." Joe said, in an annoyed voice.

"I see. So, what did you say your names were again?" He asked.

"Laura."

"Joe."

"Cool. Say, Joe…" Seth said, eyeing Joe's huge arms. "You look strong. After you sort out your water business, do you think you could help us with some stuff back here? We have heavy stuff that needs lifted."

"Um…" He thought about it for a second before replying. "I'll have to get back to you." Laura could tell that Joe wasn't sure how he was going to feel after he saw Joey again.

"Alright, just asking. We can always use the help." Seth said.

By then, Joe and Laura had filled all eight water bottles.

"Okay, let's go back and find out what's up with Joey." Laura said, and Joe nodded in agreement.

They stood up to leave, but they were interrupted by a noise. There was very loud rustling amongst the trees and bushes along the outsides of the camp. Everyone stopped what they were doing, and watched very carefully. The rustling was bigger than any rustling a human could make. The people who were helping build a shelter started backing up towards the pond, because the rustling was relatively near them.

Then, a blood curdling scream was let out by someone on the other side of the rustling trees. It was accompanied by a loud growl, but after a couple moments, the screaming was silenced. No one dared to move an inch.

Three giant cat looking animals jumped out from behind the bushes, blood staining each of their paws and mouths.


End file.
